Third Time’s The Charm

*Disclaimer: Any similarities in this blog that resemble actions of people in real life are PURELY COINCIDENTAL.*

V3 didn’t come really as a surprise for me, since I tested the site a few months ago…

Still testing it today.

SHIKASHI — It’s still amazing how we went from:

to

to

to

to

to

… yeah.

After almost half a decade, a portion of the original community still remains. That, to me, is amazing. I have never dedicated myself to a single thing for as long as I have to this community, and for that, I really do appreciate you guys, whoever is left anyway.

So, moving on to the main topic: the redesign, AKA, Version 3.

Now, like with every other redesign, there’s bound to be three types of people.

First, the ragers:

Then of course, the confuzzled and bedazzled:

And finally, the people that are indifferent/like it:

I’m among those that like it. Maybe it’s just me, but this design is a lot cleaner than the previous versions.

So what’s there to like about it?

Well, I’ll tell you.

The font is larger. Before, if you had custom fonts on, the sidebar would be completely messed up.
The new voting system — this is pretty much a love/hate feature. If you write crappy blogs, don’t expect rave reviews. But it doesn’t exactly help newcomers if they get downvoted instantly by this mob mentality aspect. Hey, you can’t have them all right.
The new lightboxes are simply amazing. Everything is lively, when you click on something, more likely than not it’ll pop out at you, making the site seem alive.
The theme. It’s dark, but not too dark. The white background/blue text pops out. Lovely.
Previews of EVERYTHING. This was a major issue in the previous version, where you had to submit and edit. Now you can preview, save to drafts, and manage blogs from a single page.
The dashboard – it has everything you’ll ever need, except for PM management, but that should be in a separate tab anyway.

Now, you might be saying, “You pretty much just listed off every single feature on the site that’s to like. What the hell is there to dislike?”

For me? Nothing. Ahaha, but there sure are a lot of missing features, or features that have gone MIA.

I, for one, would like to see:

Forum thread management a la Blog Management style.
A better friend’s page, reset friends, make it so that it’s request/accept based, then make a special friends portal – kinda like a subscribe.
A donator C-Panel — yes, I’m still clamoring for this thing, even though it’ll probably never happen.
Return of awards/achievements, but none based on post numbers. Blog likes would be a good addition.
Return of Walls, with notification, so you know if someone posted on your wall. A PM would be nice.

That’s about all I got for now.

Well, now that the site is complete, we just need to come up with something that’ll go viral and get traffic.

But since there’s no adsense, it’s not like Vusys is going to get money, right? It’s all about building the community.

Let’s bring VuTales back to the glorious MMOTales days, where Captain wasn’t such a paranoid old man and there were a dozen blogs a day. ^__^